Counting calories can be an inherently inaccurate process and cannot be successfully used to predict weight loss because food items and physical activity can be subject to wide variation, such as in relation to actual calories ingested or burned, e.g., from individual to individual, over time through life and even on a daily basis. Conventional weight loss programs often require the user to track food intake, which may be subjective. For example, one person's serving size for a particular food item may be different from another person's serving size. Moreover, weighing and measuring food items may be difficult to accomplish, and also difficult to do consistently over a course of a weight loss algorithm. In addition, tracking calories burned may be difficult, as the number of calories burned may vary from exercise to exercise and person to person.
As can be seen, for these and other reasons, there is a need for a more comprehensive health management system that is simple to use (i.e., to input food consumption and physical activity information), and that may adapt to an individual's particular and often changing response to certain food intake and exercise. Beneficially, such a system should also output metabolically related health parameters such as weight gain/loss, food quality, fluids intake and condition, salt intake and levels, percentage of vitamin rich foods, and, in addition, provide an overall health and fitness measurement that can be simply and readily understandable.